Drugs and Alcohol Recovery

Drugs and Alcohol Recovery Training Courses

We provide 1 – 3 day inhouse Solution Focused Therapy Approach training for staff working within the Drugs and Alcohol field including Outreach Teams, PCT, GPs, Rehabilitation Units and Acute Mental Health teams. Because of the nature of this strengths-based approach, staff do not need to be clinically trained to use this model.

The Working Towards Recovery, mental health training encouraged me to focus on what helps rather than just identifying the problem. It will also encourage me to work with client to set small goals, consider what is sustainable and encouraging client input. Found the training inspiring.Terry Mooney, Crisis Team Practitioner, Oldham.

A refreshing, different approach which I am sure will be valuable within my work. I’m already wondering how I’ve managed up till now without it!Sharon Holmes, Community Mental Health Team, Blackburn

The impact of the training? The revision and increased knowledge and understanding of Solution Focused practice, increased awareness of focusing on the positive in people and how resourceful they often are – versus – pathologising! I intend to introduce, more than I do, the positive focus in the process of change.Dr Charlotte Harris, Psychiatrist, Epsom Community Drug & Alcohol Team

People seeking help for their addiction are seldom asked questions about times when they “have kept themselves well” and “how they do that” and seldom asked to describe what life will be like for them once they are well again. Often people are only asked about trigger points which ironically can further reinforce their own view that recovery is a long way off.

There is a school of thought that insists that people with alcohol or drug problems must address their addictive triggers in the first instance. Our response to this is that it is of more use to have a conversation, as soon as is possible, about “what recovery will look like”. We also consider that it is important to put a metaphorical magnifying glass on the client’s life to trace any small exception to their behaviour, any time they kept themselves well (with no importance put on the “why” because motivation for change is fluid but on the “how” they did so). The worker, even if they are in recovery themselves, are not in the client’s addiction and they are not in the client’s recovery. Only the client is the expert on the client’s life and the minutia of what works and what doesn’t work for them.

Always searching for evidence, no matter how small, of any past or current success or coping strategy and leading the client on a journey to look at and talk about what their recovery will look like and the benefits recovery will bring is, for us, crucial in the move towards discovery and recovery.

A Solution Focused Approach training day with the staff of CASCADE, a Drug & Alcohol unit in Berkshire.

Solution Focused Approach To Drugs and Alcohol Recovery

Our Solution Focused Approach to Drugs and Alcohol Recovery training includes positive ways of engaging clients who have become stuck and raises staff awareness of how language used in 1:1 and Group sessions can help clients achieve change. The approach is also used extensively with entry and discharge sessions with clients and their partners as part of rehabilitative work as well as by outreach teams across the UK. The ethos of the Approach is to work collaboratively with the client to help them identify small, attainable and salient goals towards recovery and sustaining well-being.

Included in the training are the well evaluated and successful resources: The Change Balloon; The Silent Session; The Scaling Walk; The Relationship Map as well as our Groupwork and 1:1 exercises from our own Examine, Repair & Move On Approach (Murphy ’93).

For further information about our courses, please contact us on Tel: 07779 242 289 or email: info@brief-therapy-uk.com

The contents of this Web site and the resources linked to it are intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing you read on this website is meant to diagnose, substitute for, or otherwise replace actual sessional work with a practitioner